Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

BlackBerry Launches Twitter-Like BBM Channels

Posted by samzenpus on from the try-our-twitter dept.

judgecorp writes "BlackBerry has launched BBM Channels, a rather Twitter-like social network that runs on its BBM messaging system. Meanwhile the company had good news in the developing world: it is the second most popular phone in South Africa. From the article: 'The update is available for BBM users on BlackBerry 10 and some older BlackBerry smartphones, but it is promised that support will be added for iPhone and Android soon, with users of those platforms able to access the web version if they have a confirmed BlackBerry ID email address.'"

8 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. And for who? by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Who's going to use that feature and who's going to read? Not even Twitter is showing a profit.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. Professor Voice by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Meanwhile the company had good news in the developing world: it is the second most popular phone in South Africa.

    Good news everyone! We're the second-most popular phone in South Africa!

    Maybe next year they can be the fourth-most popular phone in Great Britain.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Professor Voice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Say what you want about BlackBerry, but BBM is actually one of their strongest products. The strength comes from the fact that it's encrypted* and that it has confirmation of delivery and reading. I'm actually very happy that it's available on Android and iOS now.

      *encrypted in comparison to SMS. You can make up your own mind if the NSA or others have access to the messages.

    2. Re:Professor Voice by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd be happy if my company was doing either of those thngs. If companies threw in the towel just because they couldn't make it to number one blah blah blah.

      The problem here is one of economies of scale. You can't be successful both designing and building new smartphones and also spending assloads on marketing if you aren't also a leader in the market, because smartphones are expensive to design and produce. If you're making something with a small sunk cost, that's a valid comment. Smartphones aren't that thing. All those effectively no-name Chinese smartphone makers who turn them out cheap are doing so based on copying others' designs, they don't have to sink the cost on their own.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Professor Voice by Pi1grim · · Score: 2

      Every single messenger is encrypted in the way BBM is encrypted. (at least I hope everyone's learned how to use SSL). The protocol is proprietary, that means there's going to be some hassle to implement OTR for it (you know, the only true encryption - end-to-end).

    4. Re:Professor Voice by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      They're not neccessarily copying designs, but they are jumping on board the economies of scale already established for the required components, plus also leveraging open-source for the OS.

  3. Yo, BlackBerry! by emil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's an idea for you: my Playbook would love to run BBM. It might also like to load APK files directly. It's called backporting. A few companies make quite a bit of money at it.

    1. Re:Yo, BlackBerry! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      lol you bought a Playbook.